Prince Aries in a winter wood
in feathered coat of red with hood
flew skittering each way he could
to know a World not understood.
Prince Aries in a winter wood
24 JanRay Bradbury: “You must write every single day of your life.”
24 Jan
“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
You must write every single day of your life.
You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
~ RAY BRADBURY
January 24th birthday: Edith Wharton
24 Jan
“Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”
~ Edith Wharton, b. 24 January 1862
Mark Twain: “…You want them all to land in hell…”
23 Jan
“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.”
~ MARK TWAIN
January 23rd birthday: Django Reinhardt
23 Jan
“Jazz attracted me with its formal perfection & instrumental precision – admirable in classical music, but lacking in popular music.”
~ Django Reinhardt, b. 23 January 1910
Ben Bova: “More fantastic the tale, plainer the prose.”
22 Jan
“In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.”
~ BEN BOVA
January 22nd birthday: Michael Hutchence
22 Jan
“It’s just as difficult to live in a self-made hell of privacy as it is to live in a self-made hell of publicity.”
~ Michael Hutchence, b. 22 January 1960
Stephen King: “Fiction is a lie.”
21 Jan
“Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
~ STEPHEN KING
January 21st birthday: Jeff Koons
21 Jan
“I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I’m a messenger.”
~ Jeff Koons, b. 21 January 1955
Nora Ephron: “Structure is the key to narrative.”
20 Jan
“Structure is the key to narrative. These are the crucial questions any storyteller must answer: Where does it begin? Where does the beginning start to end and the middle begin? Where does the middle start to end and the end begin?”
~ NORA EPHRON
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